Four months ago in Brisbane, Brad Hewitt bumped into Grant Dixon during the Inter Dominion and the pair chatted.
Hewitt had Captains Knock in the Inter Dominion pacing final and, of course, Dixon has Leap To Fame.
But the first thing Dixon talked about was a different horse.
“How’s Extreme Sea going?” he asked Hewitt.
That’s the impact the now rising six-year-old made in just 10 starts.
Extreme Sea hadn’t raced for over a year, but he was still in the forefront of Dixon’s mind.
“Grant said he’d kept watching for him to come back because he’s one horse he thinks could really have gone with Leap To Fame,” Hewitt said.
“It’s one thing for us to have a huge opinion of him, but when you’ve got someone like Grant say that it’s pretty awesome.”
Extreme Sea, driven by Hewitt but trained by his father David, has won seven of his 10 starts, including the past four.
But the stunningly gifted pacer sustained a suspensory ligament injury after winning the NSW Regional series final at Menangle on May 25, last year.
Extreme Sea won the Regional Metro final by 26.1m on May 18 and then returned a week later to win the overall state final by 25.4m.
He was all the rage for the world’s richest race, the $2.1mil TAB Eureka, less than four months out from it.
Captains Knock was the same age and heading the same way, but Brad Hewitt never hid the fact there was no comparison between the pair.
“Extreme Sea was just a step up again on sheer talent,” he said.
Almost 18 months have passed and Extreme Sea’s comeback is in full swing.
All going well, with another three weeks of work and trials and he’ll be back racing.
Hewitt said all the signs are positive, but quickly added these next few weeks is when Extreme Sea will be asked to really show where he’s at.
That said, there must be an underlying confidence because Hewitt mentioned a probable Victorian campaign for Extreme Sea.
“He’ll probably end up down in Melbourne if his first couple of runs back are good,” he said.
That means diving straight into the deep end given Extreme Sea would clash with Leap To Fame and/or Kingman in Victoria’s Cup series, which starts at Bendigo on January 10.
Hewitt already has a ring around those six weeks with his former Inter Dominion winning trotter The Locomotive even closer to racing.
“He might race this week or next,” he said. “We’ve given him a long and steady build-up and he’s working as good at home as he did before he went to Sweden.
“The only thing that’s taking time is his coat. He spent so long over there (Sweden), it’s thrown his body clock out a bit it seems.”
The Locomotive’s major target is the Great Southern Star, but Hewitt said the $500,000 bonus around the six legs of the Victoria Summer of Glory meant he would head down earlier.
“How things change. He was the top seed when he won the Inter Dominion (Menangle in December, 2024) and since then we’ve had Arcee Phoenix and, more recently, Keayang Zahara and Gus emerge,” he said.
“They’re a strong batch of trotters and it should make for great racing.”
PHOTOS: Club Menangle
